RELEASE

A short suspense drama film - crowdfunding this March.

Release is a short film about Hope, a woman in her 50s, forced out of an institution into an unfamiliar world, where she finds the promise of a future in a friend and disturbing echoes of the past in a bully.

Release is seen through the eyes of Hope, a quiet, vulnerable 50-year-old woman who, due to budget cuts, is squeezed out of a psychiatric facility after decades inside. Meek and overwhelmed, Hope must navigate this new world and learn to be independent. She finds work at a laundry, where she’s treated with kindness by the woman who runs it, but when Hope is targeted by a sadistic teenager, we get a glimpse of what she is truly capable of. 

Inspired by the forced closure of many psychiatric institutions in Victoria in the late 1990s, the continually dire state of the Australian public health system, and the current crisis in poverty among women over 50, Release is a complex character study of a woman, institutionalised for years, with limited ability to care for herself, suddenly abandoned by a thoughtless system and left to fend for herself in a world she doesn’t know, but when she is trapped and tormented, her survival instinct kicks in and she proves herself a frightening force to be reckoned with.

We want audiences to experience the world as Hope does, giving Release a more evocative, subjective feel than we’ve ever attempted, and connecting with audiences on a deeper level. Release is also designed to be a proof-of-concept film, demonstrating to funding bodies and financiers what we can do with a larger project in a similar style. We aim to begin pre-production in May 2025, shoot for 4 days in August, and finish post by November, with a festival and release plan for 2026.